The Cool and the Crazy
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The Cool and the Crazy is a 1958 motion picture that was distributed by American-International Pictures. The producer of the film, Elmer Rhoden Jr., was president of the Kansas City, Missouri-based Commonwealth Theaters chain, a prominent chain of motion picture theaters with stretched through Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota. Back in 1956, Rhoden Jr. had seen that teenagers were the best new audience for films (as television was drawing most adults out of theaters), and had come up with the idea of starting his own small film complex in Kansas City to produce low-budget teen exploitation films for these audiences, primarily for showing in drive-in theaters. Already, such teen films as Rebel Without a Cause, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, I Was a Teenage Werewolf, and Rock Around the Clock had been huge successes. It was the glory years of the independent regional filmmaker, and with $45,000 raised with the help of local businessmen, Rhoden Jr. hired Kansas City filmmaker Robert Altman, just starting out back then, to make the juvenile delinquency melodrama The Delinquents, which was sold to United Artists and released in 1957, grossing $1,000,000 and also firmly establishing Altman as a film director.
The success of The Delinquents encouraged Rhoden Jr. to put up even more money (about $170,000) for a second delinquency film in Kansas City. Rhoden Jr. began with thinking up a title and nothing else (The Cool and the Crazy) and, due to the fact that Robert Altman was directing television shows in Hollywood, Rhoden Jr. hired Kansas City writer and a friend of Altman's - Richard C. Sarafian - to write the screenplay for the film. Sarafian went on to direct television shows and films in California during the 1960s and 1970s.
[edit] Plot
The Cool and the Crazy tells the story of Ben Saul, a reform school graduate who is transferred to a Kansas City high school. There, Ben's clowning in class ticks off the local gang of tough guys, but he soon wins all of their admiration when he begins buying them beer, taking them to dances, giving them "kicks," and then finally turning them on to marijuana. Ben is working as a frontman for a local marijuana ring, but the local police detective is hot on his trail. When a marijuna-crazed addict teenager whom Ben has sold the drug to, dies trying to hold up a filling station for drug money, the police question him and events begin to spiral out of Ben's control. In the dramatic (or melodramatic) finale, Ben ends up killing the pusher for more marijuana only to find that there is none, and gets his just deserts in a fiery car wreck. Then there is an obligatory moralizing segment, where a policeman screams at the surviving addicts, "Is this what you call 'kicks'?! Sooner or later, if you don't wise up you're all gonna wind up like this, one way or the other."
[edit] Production
Rhoden Jr. was pleased with the script and although he mostly relied on Kansas Citians for his previous production, this time he hired a good number of Hollywood people. The four lead actors, Scott Marlowe, Dick Jones, Dick Bakalyan, and Gigi Perreau were all from California, and the director, William Witney, who some have called the master of the action film, and several other members of the crew were also from movieland.
However, it was still basically a Kansas City production. More than thirty skilled amateur performers from Kansas City, including radio announcer Shelby Storck and community theater regulars Leonard Belove and Joe Adleman, were in the cast, and local cameramen, film technicians, and makeup artists were involved with the crew. The film was shot in about two or three weeks on-location in Kansas City sometime in the latter part of 1957. The gritty, realistic locations included a Kansas City high school, where most of the students got a chance to be in the film, a run-down Aberdeen Hotel in downtown Kansas City, a greasy spoon called Pat's Pig, Penn Valley Park and the Indian Scout Statue overlooking the city, the Blue Note Club, the renowned Kansas City Jazz hall, and several real, impoverished-looking homes and neighborhoods on the "wrong side of the tracks" in the city. In the filming, Rhoden Jr. had cooperation from many local businesses and also from the Kansas City Police Department, who were contacted for several reasons. The producers wanted their portrayal of delinquency and teenage marijuana usage to be accurate, and also they figured the police would assist them in blocking off streets for filming, etc.
An interesting trivia item is the fact that while standing on the street between takes, actors Dick Bakalyan and Dick Jones were actually arrested for vagrancy by Kansas City police when their ducktails and delinquent appearance attracted the cops' attention. They actually spent several hours in the local jail, before someone explained that they were not real bad guys, just acting for a film.
Like with The Delinquents, Rhoden Jr. had The Cool and the Crazy post-production and editing executed under professional conditions in Hollywood by Helene Turner. Rhoden Jr. also now had enough money to order an original music score, which was written and conducted by veteran film composer Raoul Kraushaar. Kraushaar's idea for the score was remarkably inventive. He featured recurring versions of the film's jazzy theme song, some which were done in a fast tempo and beat, almost in a rock and roll style, and other versions that were performed in a more ominous, bluesy, much slower style.
Rhoden Jr. had apparently already worked out a distribution deal with American-International, who wanted to take advantage of Rhoden Jr.'s mini-mogul reign in the Midwest. American-International had to play it safe. The film might even be banned for its content about drug addiction. So, AIP made no mention of the drug plot in the trailer, or on the poster, and tagged on little disclaimers at the beginning and end assuring parents that this was a film made for the purpose of warning teenagers about drugs, not just a violent melodramatic exploitation film (yeah, right!) The film was released in the spring of 1958, with the "gala world premiere" in Kansas City, which was accompanied by a live radio broadcast, house lights, live music, a dance contest, and a parade of the Kansas Citians involved in the film. The film also gained extra publicity when Rhoden Jr. was photographed and lionized in Time magazine as one of the "new wave" of film producers. There, he expounded on his theory of can't-miss teen-flick genres, namely "rock and roll, drag races, horror stories, that sort of thing."
The Cool and the Crazy was actually a great box-office success, grossing more than $5,000,000 for AIP and was hailed as one of the most popular delinquency films of 1958. Despite this, and the laurels of Time, Rhoden Jr.'s mini-mogul reign was short lived. It was the dying days of the juvenile delinquent melodrama. Teen films were now geared toward beach parties or stories of young, mild, not wild, love. After relocating his production to Hollywood, Rhoden Jr. produced one more teen film, the delinquency story Daddy-O, which was a huge flop when released by AIP. A hard-living man, Rhoden Jr. died in 1959 before the age of forty.
The Cool and the Crazy was largely forgotten for many years, but has recently gained a devoted cult following for its rabid anti-marijuana message and Dick Bakalyan's thoroughly enjoyable performance. It first began to be shown on television in the 1970s, when it first began to attract its following, and was released on video the next decade.
